Analysis on Current Status and Influencing Factors of Drug Abuse among Teenagers

Abstract

Abstract. In recent years, drug abuse shows an obvious tendency of diversification and becoming younger, and teenagers' drug abuse has become one of the serious public health problems in the world. In this paper, the situation and influencing factors of teenagers' drug abuse were summarized according to the existing research. It is of significant importance to the teenagers' drug abuse prevention and correction, and also to provide evidence for preventive policy.In recent years, diversity of drug abuse tends to be more diverse and younger, and drug abuse among young people has become one of the serious public health problems in the world. It is due to the fact that teenagers' physiology and psychology are on the developing stage and they are affected easily by various factors, adolescence is a crucial period for a person's growth. Teenagers' drug abuse will cause serious bodily damage, psychological problems such as depression and suicide, or even produce all kinds of criminal acts, and lead to huge social problems. Therefore, understanding the status quo and influencing factors of drug abuse among adolescents could provide scientific basis for government making the relative policy. The Status Quo of Drug Abuse among TeenagersDrug abuse shows a low aging tendency in recent years, and drug abuse among adolescents has become a global problem. The data of drug abuse collected by Chinese National adverse drug reaction monitoring center in 2014 concluded that new drug abusers aged under 20 years old was 10.6% and the statistics of new drug abusers at the age of 21~30 years old was 49.4%, which indicated that drug abuse present an apparent trend of becoming younger in average age and drug abusers are primarily unemployed, less educated and unmarried males [1]. The result of recently foreign research also shows that drug abusers mostly are adolescent [2].Researches [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] show that the utilization rate of drug abuse among adolescents besides smoking and drinking alcohol was 1.85% to 40.9%. Students who used Opioid medicines and Depressant and Stimulants Drugs for non-medicinal purposes among students aged from 12 to 19 in Kwangtung province were 7.5% and 4.8% respectively [7].In certain southwestern province in China, 13.5% of students had the behavior of taking drugs, 40.9% of reform school students and 2.5% of students in ordinary middle school took drugs [8]. The data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2014 showed that 23.4% of students in grades 9~12 took illegal drugs [6]. The data of National survey on drug use and health in the United States (NSDUH) displayed that 15.1% of teenagers aged from 12 to 17 had the behavior of opioid drug abuse and dependence [11]. The incidence of the behavior of using prescription and non-the-counter drugs is 6.2%~20.0% among foreign adolescents [12][13][14], and the phenomenon of using psychoactive drugs such as "cough medicine" and compound liquorice tablets without medical purposes among adolescents is appearing in Chi...